University of Denver
AC-7: Incentives for Developing Courses

The University supports a Center for Community Engagement and Service Learning (CCESL)offer a vareity of ways to help faculty develop courses that emphasize community-engaged teaching.  

Community-engaged methods differ from approaches that emphasize one-way applications of academic expertise to community problems. Community engagement is a method, a strategic approach to teaching, scholarship (research, creative work) and service to address public problems through collaborative community partnerships, where community partners are involved in courses that: 

• Are reciprocal, mutually beneficial 
• Share risk, benefit, responsibility
• Can be local, national, and/or global 
• With diverse entities (e.g., non-profit, government, private sector)

In support of this endeavor, we offer a training workshop, Community-Engaged Teaching 101, for instructors who are new to community-engaged teaching. Participants will take part in training designed to increase knowledge about community-engaged pedagogy as well as prepare faculty to use best practices for community engagement in their courses. Participants are also asked to submit a syllabus from their newly developed (or revised) community-engaged course after teaching the course at least once. 

Participants will also receive:

• $600 stipend for attending the full training. 
• $125 stipend for attendees who submit a syllabus for a newly developed (or revised) community-engaged course upon completion of teaching the course.

Building off of our Community-Engaged Teaching program, the Unviersity of Denver has Communities of Practice, which  are small cohorts of cross-campus faculty who are experienced community-engaged teachers. Each community of practice focuses on a unique theme related to community engagement, and creates space to do communal reflection, collective problem-solving, and knowledge-sharing related to that topic. 

Each community of practice meets twice each quarter to explore and reflect upon ongoing learning and challenges. At the culmination of their year together, the communities of practice will have the opportunity to share their learning with the DU community at a Public Good Celebration. The structure and format of this forum will be determined by the community of practice. Each participant will also submit a written reflection with the option to have it published in a special issue of CCESL’s Public Good Impact. Participants will receive $250/quarter.

Appointed faculty, adjunct faculty, postdoctoral and graduate students instructors may apply for the workshops and Community-Engaged (CE) Teaching Funds to support: 

• Community-engaged class projects

• Development of community-engaged courses

• Institutional capacity building (e.g., bringing together instructors who teach similar courses to develop collaborative ideas for community-engaged activities)

• Community-Engaged Student Assistants

• Professional development (e.g., scholarship of teaching and learning for community-engaged teaching)